Have you noticed that as you age, it becomes easier to gain a few pounds and harder to lose them? Well, it is not just you who struggle about this thing. All of us undergo the same dilemma in getting rid of the belly fats which seem to just build-up as we age.
The reason behind the struggle of losing weight as we age is actually the decrease in the speed of the body’s metabolism. To simple put it, metabolism refers to all of the chemical reactions that occur in our body to keep it alive. It determines how many calories we burn every single day. The faster our metabolism is, the more calories we burn. When we age, the metabolic processes in our body also ages. This means that metabolism tends to slow, making it harder for adults to lose weight than teens.
As an adult, I am personally interested in learning how to counteract the effects of the decreasing speed of metabolism. Researchers suggest that aside from the natural aging of the metabolic processes in our body, losing muscle due to being less active, consuming fewer calories and proteins, and the decreasing production of hormones also significantly affect the decelerating metabolism. Lucky enough, I am sharing with you the things that we can do to combat the age-related drop of our metabolism.
1. Get Plenty of Sleep
Researches show that lacking enough sleep can slow the metabolism. It was found that getting only 4 hours of sleep reduces the metabolism by 2.6% compared to having 10 hours of sleep. Aside from that, regular sleeplessness also encourages muscle loss, another cause of a slowing metabolism.
2. Eat More Protein-Rich Foods
The notion of dieting has its benefits only for the young ones. For adults, maintaining muscle mass becomes more important. Thus, we have to make sure that we are eating enough food. We also have to increase the amount of protein-rich food in our diet as they help fight a slowing metabolism. This is because the body tends to burn more calories while consuming, digesting and absorbing protein-rich food. Hence, adding a source of protein in every meal can boost our metabolism.
3. Avoid Chemical Breakfast Cereals
Recent studies focusing on the causes of overeating and obesity has found that butylhydroxytoluene (BHT), an antioxidant mixed in common breakfast cereals to keep fats from being rancid is actually an “endocrine disruptor”. An endocrine disruptor is a chemical that somehow inhibit the digestive system’s ability to tell the brain when the body is full. Unable to do so, the brain cannot process that the body has eaten sufficient food, causing us to eat more than what is enough.
4. Drink Tea Regularly
Aside from protecting the cells from damage and reducing the risk of a heart disease, teas are found to be effective in losing weight. Among the various teas, there is a substantial evidence that associates Green Tea to the decrease in body weight, body fat and waist circumference. Its high catechin content, a certain type of antioxidant, is said to be the reason for its effectiveness in inducing weight loss.
5. Add More Fiber to Your Diet
Fiber is already known for its good effects in our digestive function. Do you know that it also helps in maintaining a healthy body weight? Fiber-rich foods stimulates the cholecystokinin, a powerful anti-hunger hormone in the body. It makes us feel full longer after eating.
6. Exercise Regularly
It is undeniable that as we age, we become less active. Being less active, we eventually lose our muscles. This case is called sarcopenia. Aside from causing weakness and high risk to fractures, sarcopenia slows down metabolism. To fight this, we have to maintain enough muscles since having muscles increases our resting metabolism. Even when sleeping or resting, our body continues to burn calories. We can increase the amount of calories we burn while resting by having muscles, in addition to the calories we burn during the actual exercise.
Let me remind you that we cannot do a crash exercise. Indulging in a high-intensity work out without undergoing proper fostering may cause adverse effects to the body. Our daily work-must fit to the present state of our body. Life Botanica has a 21-Day Program which gives us an exercise guide along with a diet plan. The guide is designed that can be done both outdoors and indoors, whichever we please. To learn more about this and to start counteracting an aging metabolism, visit www.lifebotanica.com.
